


Seven Ways We Spy

by Speechwriter (batmansymbol)



Category: Seven Ways We Lie - Riley Redgate
Genre: Espionage AU, Gen, seven ways we spy.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-06-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:33:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24561643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/batmansymbol/pseuds/Speechwriter
Summary: Valentine hadn’t joined Redhawk forthis.He hadn’t graduated from MIT at the age of 20, forfeited all semblance of a “social life” (a low-value endeavor, but still), and soared through the ranks of the most secretive intelligence and anti-corruption organization in the Western world … forthis.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	Seven Ways We Spy

Valentine hadn’t joined Redhawk for _this._

He hadn’t graduated from MIT at the age of 20, forfeited all semblance of a “social life” (a low-value endeavor, but still), and soared through the ranks of the most secretive intelligence and anti-corruption organization in the Western world … for _this_.

When Santos had told him he’d be directing a team for the first time, Valentine had been thrilled. Admittedly, he hadn’t known how to show it. He’d given his head an awkward jerk and said, “Understood.” He’d trusted her to infer his excitement from the way he nearly tripped hurrying out of her office.

He’d spent the following two weeks tearing through book after book about how to manage and organize teams. After all, he supposed, it would be uncomfortable for his field agents, some of whom might be twice his age, to take orders from a 26-year-old. He needed to get out in front of it. He’d have to establish … well, not _dominance,_ but his own capability. His unwillingness to compromise on excellence.

They couldn’t claim he was unqualified. At 21, Valentine had been the youngest Redhawk agent ever to graduate training: fluent in nine languages, full marks on the written and stealth tests. He’d spent the five following years in the field, at first doing grunt work like shuttling dossiers from one higher-level agent to another, but at 24, analyzing one such dossier, he’d sniffed out a trail of increasingly arcane clues to a cult based in rural Iowa, which had been planning a series of high-profile ritual killings. Valentine had an eye for that sort of thing.

Arcane clues, that was. Not ritual killings.

After that, the tenor of his field work had changed substantially. _He_ was the one being handed the dossiers. And then, this fall, Santos had told him that they had a lead on an assassin’s organization in San Francisco, and that he—no, _his team_ would be the one trusted to destabilize it. Once Valentine had gotten past the idea of an assassin’s organization just _sitting_ there beside the million-dollar mansions of tech CEOs, he’d been ecstatic for the responsibility.

And then he’d met the team.

There were four of them, and they were all even younger than he was. Olivia Scott, Juniper Kipling, and Claire Lombardi had been shuttled into his lap fresh off the back of their very first field mission. And the fourth was Lucas McCallum, who had graduated training, oh, _four months_ ago, and loped into the office on the first day with his curly hair bouncing and a massive, enthusiastic grin plastered on his face, as if he’d just walked into a birthday party.

“Why?” Valentine said, after striding into Santos’s office roughly one hour after this ‘team’ showed up. “Why is this happening? Please, enlighten me.”

“Simmons,” Santos said lightly, not looking up from her laptop. “Something wrong?”

“Yes, something is _wrong!_ You’ve given me a _high school clique_ instead of a team of operatives! That’s what’s wrong!”

“Funny.” Santos arched one dark brow, still—to Valentine’s infuriation—typing. “I was under the impression that I’d worked for three months, ceaselessly, tirelessly, to snatch these agents out from under the noses of the seven other managers who would have killed to have them for their teams. Including Jackson. And Chiang.”

Valentine sputtered. “Wh— _Chiang_ wanted _them?_ ”

“Chiang wanted Kipling, specifically.” Santos sighed and finally looked up from her laptop. “Honestly, Valentine, did you even look at their records, or did you just see that they were younger than you and decide they had to be worthless?”

“I … I did _glance_ at … well, I saw that the women only had one completed mission, and McCallum has nothing. Nothing!” he added, gaining a bit of steam again.

“He’s perfect for this. The kid is a chameleon. Put him and Scott in field, and Kipling and Lombardi on support, and we’d be set, even without you in the driver’s seat.” Santos hesitated, giving Valentine one of those piercing looks he hated so much. Whenever his former team leader looked him in the eye, he felt seventeen years old again, nervous and awkward and never quite enough.

“It’s going to be fine,” she said.

Valentine sighed, feeling resigned. Of course she knew why he’d really come in. Of course she could tell that he was worried his first mission would be a failure, that the one thing in his life he really loved would fall out from under him.

“I know,” he said.

He turned on his heel, and just before crossing the threshold, he muttered, “Thanks.”

He thought he heard her chuckle as the door clicked shut.

#

“So, he hates us,” Olivia said, flicking an M&M across the desk into Claire’s fire-red hair. “I wonder if he hates _all_ of us, or if he’s just resentful about getting stuck with someone as irresistibly alluring as me.” She turned and fluttered her eyelashes at Juniper, who laughed.

“Oh, come on, he doesn’t _hate_ us, Olivia,” Claire said, plucking the M&M out of her hair and flicking it back. “If anything,” she added, “he’s too professional to hate us.”

“No one’s too professional to hate people,” said Lucas, grabbing the M&M off the desk and popping it into his mouth.

Olivia grinned, shaking her head. In two years of training with Lucas, she’d never so much as seen him give someone a disapproving look. “How would _you_ know, McCallum? Have you ever hated anyone?”

“Yes,” said Lucas, scowling at her, which made him look like an adorable seven-year-old. “I hated the girl at the coffee shop this morning who gave me a _small coffee._ Small.” He gestured to all six foot four of his body. “Small!”

Juniper was watching with that austere, slightly distant smile. Her gray eyes flicked toward the door as Simmons’s crisp, cold voice said,

“All right, listen up.”

They all wiped the smiles off their faces, looking toward the front of the room, where a projector displayed the first screen of a debrief.

“I trust you’ve all read the information that was sent to you three days ago,” he said, narrowing his eyes at them in a way that suggested he didn’t, at all, trust that they’d read anything. And when they all nodded, his suspicion only seemed to deepen. Olivia had the bizarre urge to laugh.

“All right,” he said. “Then you know the mission is to infiltrate and destabilize an international assassins’ syndicate based out of San Francisco. They call themselves the Silent Friends, and we’ve managed to track down someone who used to be among their number, who’s told us how to join their ranks.”

“Uh,” said Olivia, half-raising her hand. “ _Join?_ ”

“Yes,” said Valentine. “You, specifically, will be joining the Silent Friends.”

“Right. Got it. Do I get to skip the killing people part of the initiation, or …?”

Valentine’s eyes narrowed practically to slits. “This isn’t a game, Scott. It’s not a joke. If you had _read_ the files we’d sent, you’d know that this organization is potentially responsible for political killings in fourt—”

“Fourteen different countries over the last three years, yeah, I know,” Olivia said, raising one eyebrow at him. “Page three.”

Valentine’s frown, for the first time, eased. He looked surprised, but recovered quickly. “Yes. Well.” He cleared his throat. “ _As_ such, I expect you to treat the mission with the appropriate gravitas. Precision is key.” He turned back to the projector and clicked to the next slide. “This is one of several safehouses the Silent Friends use to operate.”

‘This’ was a massage parlor with a sign in the window that said NECK AND BACK 30MIN 39.99!!!!

Olivia struggled to maintain the appropriate gravitas.

“Scott,” Simmons went on, “you’ll be making the initial approach with no wire or contact. We don’t know their level of technology or surveillance; our source left training in early stages. We can give you a panic button disguised as cosmetics, though. Lombardi, you’ll be on standby in case she needs immediate extraction. Until then, you and Kipling are on research and background. You’ll have two weeks to surveil the place and case out people of interest.”

Claire nodded, her pen scribbling quick, detailed notes.

“We do already have one suspected trainee,” Simmons said. He clicked to the next slide, and up came a slightly blurry photograph of a tan, gangly man with reddish-brown hair. A beanie was pulled low over his forehead, and his hands were deep in his pockets. He was looking blankly at the ground as he walked. Olivia thought he looked a bit sad.

“Matt Jackson,” Simmons said. “We think he’s in training. He lives here.” He clicked again, and up popped maybe 300 square feet of studio. Every single inch of the floor was covered in clothing, old pizza boxes, receipts, crumpled blankets, and spreads of papers.

Simmons’s lips twitched with obvious distaste as he scanned the filthy studio. “He gets home and smokes for hours, then goes back to the safehouse. Occasionally he goes to see this man, Burke Fischer.” Another click, and up popped a massive man, even taller than Lucas, with neon-green hair. “They appear to be friends. … Jackson’s parents are divorced and live elsewhere in San Francisco with his 13-year-old brother.”

Simmons looked back to Olivia. “Suffice it to say that his life doesn’t seem like the most promising situation. We suspect he’s turned to initiation with the Silent Friends because of a lack of other options. It’ll be your job to be the other option, Scott. Get close to him inside the organization and find out everything he knows. McCallum, you’ll be befriending Fischer and introducing yourself into Jackson’s life that way. Bug the apartment as soon as possible. We’ll work on your new identities for the next two weeks.” He paused and flipped back to the slide of Matt Jackson’s face. “Let’s work on strategy writeups today. Reconvene at 4:30.”

He didn’t say anything else, but for a moment he looked between the four of them, and Olivia thought she saw a hint of doubt in his face. She thought, if he had been someone else, he might have said something like, _Let’s do this right._

But he was already stalking to the small private office at the back of the room and slipping inside.

“Efficient,” Lucas remarked, and Claire stifled a laugh. But Olivia was looking back at the screen, at Matt Jackson’s dark downcast eyes, at the slumped shoulders. She’d seen a room like that studio of his once before: her sister Kat’s, ten years ago, in the months after their mother had left. And that look on his face—hopelessness. She could see it in his whole body.

 _He’s training to kill people,_ she reminded herself as she opened her laptop.

Still. If the mission was compromised, it wouldn’t be her neck on the line. It would be his. His, and his divorced parents’, and his teenage brother’s.

Simmons had one thing right. Precision was key.

**Author's Note:**

> This AU was written for Lindsey :)


End file.
